About helloChina
An honest read on relocating to Shanghai.
Built by a household that has actually made this move — twice, with school-aged kids — across two countries.
Why this exists
A mother and daughter who’ve made every move you’re about to make.
helloChina is a mother-and-daughter team — Lisa and Amir.
Lisa raised three children through public, private, and international schools, in China and abroad. Every school, neighborhood, and settling-in decision a relocating family is about to make, she has already made — as a parent who has done it. She is the experience and the steady hand behind every recommendation.
Amir was born in Chongqing, raised in Xiamen, and has called Shanghai home for fifteen years. She finished high school in Canada and earned a Math degree from the University of Waterloo. Years of running an export business followed — serving clients across dozens of countries — so she knows how foreign families think and what gets lost across cultures. She is who you’ll work with.
Two generations, one team: a parent who has done it, and a daughter who bridges the cultures. That’s helloChina.
Independent. Paid by clients only. Honest about what we know — and what we don’t.
Why we exist
Why helloChina exists
Most people's picture of China is years out of date. Today's Shanghai is safe, fast, and astonishingly convenient — clean streets, world-class transit, healthcare and food, a city that simply works. Yet that story rarely reaches the families and professionals deciding where to move, so they default to Singapore, Europe, or the US without giving China a real look.
We started helloChina to change that — to help newcomers rediscover China and feel at home in Shanghai fast. Not as tourists passing through, but as people who live, work, and genuinely enjoy one of the world's great cities. We take the friction out of the first months, so the city can speak for itself.
How we get paid
Clients pay us. Schools, landlords, and visa agents do not.
In this market, an agent's income is usually tied to the rent they close, or to commissions from schools and visa services — so whoever nominally pays, their loyalty points upstream, not toward you. helloChina rejects all of that.
- No landlord commissions on apartment matches
- No school referral or admissions-office fees
- No visa-agent splits or filer commissions
- Government and 3rd-party fees itemized on every invoice
- Your shortlist, your schools, your decisions — exclusively yours
Our method
School first. Then neighborhood. Then commute. Then apartment. Visa anchors all of it.
Most relocations start with the apartment because it's the easiest thing to picture. That's the most common — and most expensive — sequencing mistake. School choice has the longest application timeline, the most rigid intake windows, and the deepest second-order effects on family life. It needs to anchor the rest.
Our work runs the move in the order that holds up: school → neighborhood → commute → apartment. Visa timing wraps the whole sequence with deadlines, because visa rejections at renewal are the single most common late-stage failure we see.
We sequence it so you don't have to resequence later.
What we are
- A small Shanghai-based advisory
- Independent and parent-first
- Operators with real cross-border business experience
- Honest about scope, timing, and what we don't know
- Paid by clients, in writing, before work begins
What we are not
- A real-estate agency — we represent tenants, not landlords
- A corporate relocation provider — we serve self-paying families
- A guarantee — admissions and approvals are made by schools and authorities, not by us
- Paid by anyone other than you
If your move is on the horizon, let's talk.
A 30-minute orientation call is free. We tell you which service fits — or honestly, that we're not the fit, and point you somewhere that is.